The Reluctant Responder

Sitting here at my desk, I’m tempted to start singing a take-off of the old Stealers Wheel song: “Papers to the left of me/Papers to the right/Here I am, stuck in the middle with you.” The “you,” in this case, is my alter ego, the reluctant responder. While I am enthused about reading the ideas that my students have brought to the page, he is shuddering at the workload and worrying about fulfilling our responsibility as readers. How is it possible to provide the most useful response for every student? Occasionally, his worry wins out and I end up procrastinating (hmm, why not put together something for Word Works?), and sometimes he even tempts me to promise that next semester I’ll have my students condense all their thoughts into haiku. When he starts down that road, I know it’s time for a little talk with him.

RR:      Think of it, each student paper would only be seventeen syllables long.

Me:      We’re not doing haiku. What we’re doing is responding to these papers.

RR:      But that will take forever! Look at that stack. It’s higher than the Boise phone book. I don’t even know why we bother to respond to these. Can’t we just shuffle them up, flip a few coins, give out some grades and be done?

Me:      No. You know as well as I do that written comments are valuable for students. Earlier editions of Word Works have made that same point, explaining how well-constructed teacher comments can help students develop their writing.

RR:      Wait a minute! You were supposed to be procrastinating.

Me:      Call it productive procrastination. Responding to student writing is an issue for many teachers, and it’s a common topic for this forum. Sometimes it helps me to go back and review what others have said about composing productive responses. For instance, consider the October 1986 edition of WW, and these thoughts about written comments:

§         Written comments are important, so that the writer will know that the work has been taken seriously and read carefully. The comments should not be just words and phrases, but sentences and paragraphs.

§         Positive comments are important. Whatever the writer did well should be pointed out. This is hard, because we tend to take the good parts for granted. But it’s possible to get in the habit of pointing out the good parts.

§         Many comments that teachers make on papers are too vague to be helpful to students. And often, especially after many papers, teachers strike an inappropriate tone.

§         What the writer did not do well is easy to spot and all too easy to point out. But tearing a paper apart . . . seldom leads to improvement. The writer will get more out of your comments if you concentrate on just three or four problems. Keep in mind that we are readers of our students’ papers, not editors.

§         Put higher-order concerns in front of lower-order concerns. Higher-order concerns are about content: focus, development, organization, and voice. Lower-order concerns are about grammar, spelling, and punctuation.

RR:      All right, you make a good argument. Teacher response should be positive, specific, well-written, and focused first on global issues rather than sentence-level concerns. I don’t disagree with you, but I’m still worried that we’ll be here all night. Let's just put a couple of check marks for organization and style and go watch the ball game.

Me:      No, we're not doing that. But, there are some ways for handling a large number of papers. These suggestions come from the same issues of WW: 

§         Type your responses instead of writing them. Typing allows you to write much more and much faster than writing by pencil. It also helps you keep your hands off the paper and see its overall merits more clearly.

§         Hold students accountable for correctness, by all means. But do not mark all the errors you find in a paper. That, more than anything, takes the fun out of reading your students’ work and causes them to lose heart. Studies have proven that students learn very little from the instructor’s corrections, anyway. A more effective method is to mark just half a page, near the end, that has problems typical of the whole paper. You can, if you wish, require the student to correct the rest of the paper and resubmit it for credit.

§         Now and then, instead of responding to individual papers, write the class a letter about the batch of papers as a whole. Be sure to take no more time doing this than you would spend writing individual comments. It will often require less time.

RR:      Hmmm, those sound rather helpful. And didn't I see you typing up some other ones?

Me:      Were you reading over my shoulder again?

RR:      Trust me, I try not to, but with this alter-ego thing, it’s a little difficult. Just give me the suggestions.

Me:      All right.

§         Consider giving quick responses early on, as Richard Bullock suggests. Individual or group conferences offer good forums for early response: teachers can talk with students about their ideas for papers and offer advice on how to proceed. Bullock also mentions the idea of having students write brief proposals, as these “can be reviewed fairly quickly” and our responses can forestall “problems with unwieldy topic choices or research plans” (54). We may also ask for everyone in class to submit the first page of her paper, again giving us a chance to help shape the direction and focus of a paper, saving us from having to respond to that on the final draft. In addition, if the proposals/first pages show that many students are wrestling with a similar issue, then we can raise that issue in class, allowing one group conversation to take the place of several (nearly identical) written comments.

§         When collecting final drafts, ask students to respond to their own papers. Then, those comments can be used as a starting point for our own (Bullock mentions this approach, and many other teachers have also suggested ways to incorporate student self-evaluation into the classroom). More often than not, students are remarkably astute about their writing and how well they addressed the particulars of an assignment. After all, they’ve had several years of schooling, giving them extensive experience in reading teacher comments. Playing off of their comments, we can show them where we agree with their assessment, or explain how we are reading their paper differently than they are. Using student responses not only saves us some time when responding to papers but also helps us establish conversations about writing with our students—should we have more than one paper assigned during a semester, we can build upon each previous set of comments, giving students and us a valuable record of the evolution of their writing throughout the class.

§          Tape recording comments for students is another possibility. We can read the papers out loud and students can literally hear when we become confused, or when we are enjoying a turn of phrase or a well-structured argument.

§         Or, if you like typing comments, consider the “track changes” feature of MSWord (under “Tools”). The program allows readers to highlight sections of papers and to insert their comments, which lets us place our thoughts next to the appropriate section of the paper without worrying about running out of room in the margin.

RR:      To tell the truth, those sound like pretty good ideas, too. Not bad for someone who relies on semi-obscure 70’s pop songs in his writing.

Me:      Now, that was not a positive comment.

RR:      Just kidding. I think I’m sore because you’ve taken away my arguments for not responding to these papers. In fact, I’m starting to look forward to it.

Me:      That’s the whole idea. Responding should be positive for us and for the students. And, as I said before, others have talked about responding, and there are several good resources available. For instance, Word Works 90/91 looks at teacher comments on student papers, considering how to focus a constructive comments while maintaining a respectful tone towards the student and her writing. The article is based in part on what students have to say about teacher comments, so it is particularly helpful.
            And, there are several titles geared towards helping teachers not only respond to student writing but also develop the writing assignments. Included is the Bullock text mentioned above.

Bean, John C. Engaging Ideas: The Professor’s Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking, and Active
    Learning in the Classroom. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1996.

Bullock, Richard. The St. Martin’s Manual for Writing in the Disciplines: A Guide for Faculty. Boston:
    Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1994.

Howard, Rebecca Moore, and Sandra Jamieson. The Bedford Guide to Teaching Writing in the
    Disciplines.  Boston: Bedford Books, 1995.

Moss, Andrew, and Carol Holder. Improving Student Writing: A Guidebook for Faculty in All
    Disciplines. Dubuque: Kendall/Hunt, 1988.

Soven, Margot K. Write to Learn: A Guide to Writing Across the Curriculum. Cincinnati:
     South-Western College P, 1996.

One main point to take from many of these works, in regard to responding to papers, is that probably the biggest thing that can influence response time to a paper is the amount of time we spend before responding. Meaning, the more detailed we are with students (and ourselves) about the criteria for a paper, the more time we’ll save when responding. We’ll have developed a shorthand of sorts, and students will be familiar with the language we’re using in our responses. Moss and Holder even suggest that teachers, if there’s time, write an essay in response to their assignments. That way, we have an even better sense of what we want students to accomplish.
     So, again, responding doesn’t have to be a burden.

RR:      All right, I’m sold. Let’s get started.

Me:      Now that’s the kind of response I was looking for.

 

MM

PS. If you have any thoughts about responding to student writing that you would like to share, please consider sending them to michaelmattison@boisestate.edu  or to MS 1525.

 Word Works